


Higher Ground

by inlovewithnight



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-02-13
Updated: 2007-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-15 15:08:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Higher Ground

Helo’s pretty sure this is his fault.

There’s no real reason to think so; it could be chance, coincidence, some kind of freakish cosmic moment of spite. Rationally, it’s just bad luck, but "rational" is a dim and distant thing right now.

He makes the mistake of asking Maggie on the second night, when they find a rocky overhang with enough cover to let them light a tiny fire. She stares at him across the cramped space, her eyes bright through the dark streaks of dried blood on her face, running down from the bandage taped crookedly across her forehead.

“Of course it’s your fault, you frakking idiot,” she says, and throws a rock at him.  
***  
There wasn’t any time to worry about blame during the crash, of course. Just a lot of yelling, and cursing, and trying to hit something that would give a little, like some trees, instead of something that wouldn’t, like a cliff.

Of course, the problem with crashing into a bunch of trees was that the Raptor cut a reasonably visible trail through them as it skidded to a halt. When they crawled out of the emergency hatch, Maggie was using the kind of vocabulary that Helo had only heard in vids featuring Tauran long-haul freight pilots and Geminese schoolgirls. Debris rained down on them as they moved into the woods, most of it on fire.

She looked up at the sky and blinked, putting one hand up to shield her eyes after wiping away the worst of the blood. Bits of ash fell into her hair like stars.

“Maggie?” he asked, looking back at the Raptor.

“Run,” she said.

He was balancing the medkit and emergency transmitter, she had a case of grenades and the recon data that they’d been bringing back to Galactica when they got into this mess, and they both had to keep their sidearms out and ready. There wasn't any time to think or feel or do anything but roll with his instincts, every reaction based deep in muscle memory.

It wasn't until they stopped to catch their breath the first time, about an hour after they broke atmo, that the pieces filtered down and came together. Lying flat on his stomach under a bush, every breath burning in his lungs, flight suit a pressure cooker holding in rapidly cooling sweat of exertion and sour sweat of fear, he recognized where he was and what he was doing, and pressed his palm to his mouth to hold back a painful laugh.

Same frakking story all over again. Same song, second verse. It was a new sky and a new planet, but Helo had been here before.  
***  
“Do you enjoy being chased around by Cylons?” Maggie demands, still staring at him across their little fire, and apparently the narrow space beneath the overhang feels secure enough for her to vent off the top few layers of her mind. “Because you might have noticed that this isn’t the first time this has happened to you.”

“Are you serious? Wow. Thanks for pointing that out.” She reaches for another rock and he holds his hands up in surrender. “Guess the Gods just have it in for me.”

She raises her eyebrows, winces as that tugs at the cut on her forehead, settles for a sharp tone of voice. “Are you frakking kidding me? You’re Gods- _touched_ , Karl Agathon, in addition to all the other extra-special ways you are _touched_. You’d be dead a dozen times over if you weren’t. You’re a favored frakking son.”

He shakes his head, wrapping his arms around his knees and squinting out past the firelight at the dark. “I wish the Gods would find some other way of showing that than stranding me on random planets full of Cylons.”

“Trust me, you’re not coming out of this one with a baby,” she mutters, then grins when he whips his head around to stare at her. “Seriously, Helo, stay over there on your side. I’m afraid to let you breathe on me funny.”

“What...” He blinks, casting around for a comeback and not coming up with anything better than "You're blocked." Like every other female pilot in the fleet who wasn't replaced with a Cylon duplicate.

“Like it matters? That’s what they’re chasing us for, you know,” she barrels on, laughing through the words, eyes a little too focused for him to think _hysterical_ but close. “Want another shot at your super baby-making powers. You knocked up a toaster, Helo, that’s a rare and special talent. Human medicine doesn't stand a chance."

“Frak off,” he mutters, shaking his head and grinning despite himself, and she dissolves into laugher, clapping one hand over her mouth to muffle it and slumping back against the wall.

That’s different from back on Caprica, he’s pretty sure. He can’t remember if he and Sharon ever really _laughed_ , even when they didn’t have to run.  
***  
Sometimes he wonders if maybe the Cylons caught him, back on Caprica. Maybe they put him in a jar and plugged him into a machine and all of this, all of everything since then, has been a game. A test. Maybe they're just frakking with his head, and this is part of it.

Or maybe there's a glitch in their machine, and this repetition is an error, and they've all gone off and left him and he's trapped here in his head forever.

"Racetrack to Helo," Maggie hisses, kicking him in the ankle. "Pay attention to where you're frakking going."

Thank the Gods for Margaret Edmondson, infuriating and hardassed and bitchy as she might be. He'd never dream her up for company in a mindfrak, and no Cylon could invent her. She has to be real, because she's not comforting and she's not always particularly helpful and she's riding his ass day and night, picking and digging at his skin and his soul, booting him forward every time he tries to balk. Nothing like Sharon at all. Not what the Cylons would use to keep him busy.

He holds on to that, to her, to all the ways this is _different_ , and that takes him up another canyon.  
***  
The terrain is all jagged rock when they get out of the forests, steep ravines cutting against the grain and providing the closest they'll find to a path to follow. They're heading for the high ground, trying to give their little transmitter the best chance to get through to Galactica. This time, at least, there's a possibility that somebody's looking for him, coming back for him. He tells himself that when he's setting the grenades in the crevices of a rock face, hoping like hell that geology and demolition are intuitive enough that this will make a roadblock instead of a light show.

There's no radiation to worry about here. No abandoned buildings full of ghosts, no bodies. No elaborate trap, with circles within circles and bait at the center that will break and heal and change his heart.

"You ready?" Maggie is suddenly at his elbow, squinting at how he's rigged up the grenades. "That looks good. Come on. We don't have all day."

"When did you become an expert?" he asks, sharper than intended.

"Everybody needs a hobby," she says, with that just-on-the-edge of maniacal grin, the one that scares him and reassures him at once because if she's crazy, he's not allowed to be. "Move it, Karl. Let's blow this thing."  
***  
The roadblock trick works, but only once; the Cylons aren't stupid and they have to be stingy with their grenades. And really, it only works in the sense that it buys them hours, maybe half a day. Then the Cylons manage to flank them and start driving them back down toward the forest again.

"You think they really want the data?" Maggie asks when they go to ground again for the night, scowling at the flat, hard-sided case they've decided to protect with their lives because the dog tags around their necks say that they should. "Or are they just frakking with us?"

"They must have a reason," he mumbles, closing his eyes against the low burn of exhaustion in every muscle, every bone, every vein.

"Do they? You really think it's all in service of some great master plan?" She laughs a little and shakes her head, and he forces one eye open to look at her. That wasn't the edgy half-crazy laugh, the one he's gotten used to in the past few days. That just sounded tired, and too close to giving up for his liking.

If Maggie gives up, he doesn't know if he can carry her. He has the weight of his own guilt on his shoulders, of whatever it is he's done that the Gods have to keep punishing. If he has to carry all of her hardheaded realism on top of that, he thinks it would be too much. Running like this doesn't let him feel strong, doesn't even let him fake it the way he could if there was a place to make a stand.

"Hey," he says, moving closer and nudging her in the ribs with his elbow. "Doesn't matter why they're doing it. All that matters is getting out of here, okay?"

"You only got off Caprica because Sharon saved your ass," she says, not pulling away but not relaxing against him, either. "In case you forgot."

"Yeah, well." He tilts his head back and squints up at the stars. Somewhere up there, with any luck, was Galactica. "This time I'll save myself."

She glances at him, smiling faintly, and bumps her shoulder against his. "What about me?"

"You save yourself, too. I'm not going to do _everything_."

She laughs, really softly, and presses against him just enough to cue him to press back.  
***  
After four days, the rations they took from the wreck are running out and the Cylons still won't let them make it up to the high ground. "We need a new plan," he says, checking the clip on his sidearm. Not more than a Pyramid court's length away, two metal Cylons and a skin job are guarding the mouth of another ravine. They look idle, almost bored, if those terms can be applied. He knows Sharon can get bored, can feel all of the things that humans feel, but though he'd never admit it to her he's never really been able to believe that all the other Cylons are the same, that she's not special.

"That's very insightful," Maggie mutters, propping herself up on her elbows beside him. "I never would've thought of that without your help."

He ignores her and watches the Cylons. The humanoid one is male, the same model as the one outside the farm Kara escaped from on Caprica. "Only three of them...we have enough grenades left to take 'em out?"

"Enough by the numbers? Yeah. You tell me how we're going to do it, though. Walk up and say 'Hey, got some presents for you guys'?" He shakes his head and squints across the open ground again. She keeps talking, muttering to herself and crawling forward to see around his shoulder without craning her neck. "Or maybe 'Hold this for a minute, would you, buddy? Thanks.' That'd work, sure, wouldn't it? I mean, you're the expert..."

"Maggie," he says, staring at her. She glares at him, defensive, then shrugs and looks over at the Cylons again.

They lie there for a long, silent moment, and Helo winces at the pain in his back, running up and down both sides of his spine in muscles that haven't relaxed in days. He'd wake up in his rack on Galactica with that pain shooting through him, some mornings, after a nightmare about still being stuck back there on Caprica, alone and rotting from the inside out with radiation, melting down into the poisoned soil.

"I have an idea," she says, kicking him in the calf, and he vaguely wonders why everything she says to him has to be accompanied by physical assault. She squirms backward, sliding into the shadow of the brush under the trees, and he follows with a final wary glance back at the enemy.

"What is it?" he asks, sitting up and watching her flip the catch on the grenade case. "I thought you said those wouldn't work."

"I figured out a delivery system." She squints down at the devices, then glances up at him. "You got the screwdriver?"

He digs the multipurpose tool out of his pocket and tosses it over to her. She starts prying the casing off one of the grenades, and he hisses, pulling back. "The frak are you doing?"

"Just need the charge."

"Then you're not going to be able to control when it frakking blows up in your face."

"Not _my_ face, genius." She pulls her sidearm from its holster and empties the clip out onto the leaves. "Lucky Mr. Toaster on the left."  
***  
Helo's never been a big fan of heights, and he suspects that Maggie knows that and made up this part of her little plan specifically as a shitty joke on him. He's halfway up a frakking _tree_ , maybe half-again his own height above the toaster-style Cylons, watching the brush line on the opposite side and wondering if she even made it over there. At least he can be pretty sure she didn't blow her frakking hand off somewhere in the woods; he probably would have heard that, or else the Cylons would have. Gods. This is all too familiar as well, this feeling of not knowing the plan, of his whole life being in someone else's hands. Though in Sharon's case, she kept saying "Trust me," and "Just move, mister!" Maggie told him to shut the frak up and go climb his tree. So at least that's new.

He looks up sharply as the brush stirs and Maggie steps out into the clearing, her hands in the air. "Hey," she calls, "I'm coming out, okay? Surrendering. Don't shoot me."

That's the big risk, right here in the plan: if the Cylons decide to just wipe them out and search the woods for the recon kit. He's tempted to close his eyes, not wanting to have to watch if they do blow her head off on the spot, but forces himself to keep them open, keep his head up, keep his hand steady.

"Where's the other one?" the skin job asks, not moving an inch. One of the toasters steps forward instead, moving to within an arm's length of Maggie. She keeps her eyes on the humanoid one, not flinching, and Helo feels a hot flash of pride.

"He's dead," she says, her voice clipped and cool. "At the bottom of a cliff with my transmitter. Not getting out of here on my own, so you motherfrakkers win."

"Toss your weapon on the ground," he says, and she nods, lowering one hand and tugging the gun from her belt. She tosses it with perfect accuracy-- _girl should've played Pyramid_ \--and lands it right between the toaster's feet.

And nothing happens.

Helo does squeeze his eyes shut now, cursing every God he can think of for screwing them over. That impact should've set off the charge she'd jammed in the chamber in a nice whiz-bang explosion that would've made the odds two-on-two. Frak.  
***  
The next few minutes are pretty much a blur, though some vague and giddy and detached part of his brain knew he'd eventually have to lay them out in sequence for a report back on Galactica. He's pretty sure it went like this:

\-- The skin job walked toward Maggie, starting in on one of the patented Cylon spiels about frak knows what.

\-- At the same time, the toaster picked up the gun with its spindly-razor fingers, flipped it up into the base of its hand and closing the bases of the fingers around it tight.

\-- Maggie grabbed the skin job, yanked him toward her and kissed him, twisting left.

\-- The goddamn gun blew up. Finally.

\-- Skin-job Cylon got to play the role of human shield, and suddenly the odds were two-on-one favoring the humans.

\-- Helo remembered to start pulling the trigger on his own gun and emptied the clip into the remaining toaster.

Oh, and then they ran like hell, again, straight up the ravine and toward the high ground.  
***  
Helo sprawls out flat on his back, staring up at the indifferent sky, the transmitter balanced on his chest. The activity light blinks steady and unwavering, sending out its message and getting nothing back.

"You know what the problem is," Maggie says, dragging her heel through the dirt as she paces the length of the little rise they're camped out on.

"We took too long to get up here."

"Yeah, well." She shakes her head and abruptly drops down to the ground beside him, joining him in staring at the little light. "Only reason it's too late is that my call sign isn't Starbuck and yours isn't Apollo."

He has to laugh, a little bit, even though there's not a damn thing that's funny. "You think it's that simple?"

"Black and frakking white, my friend." She shakes her head and picks the transmitter up off of him.

"What are you doing?"

"Throwing it down the ravine?" She doesn't, though, just sets it aside and stretches out on her back next to him, frowning at the stars.

"Not a bad spot for a last stand, I guess," he says after a few minutes.

"Yeah." He glances over at her, watching her eyes watch the sky without blinking. She swallows, her jaw tight. "Take out a good half-dozen of 'em with us."

"Damn right we will." He catches her hand and squeezes lightly, offering her a little smile. She stares at him for a long moment, not returning it, and he lets go. "Sorry."

She shakes her head, letting go a soft huff of laughter, and before he quite knows what's going on she rolls over and rises up and settles on top of him, straddling his waist and looking down at him in solemn concentration.

"Maggie--"

She shakes her head and leans down, covering his mouth with hers. She doesn't kiss him right away, just breathes against him and tastes his breath in return. She licks her lips, her tongue crossing his too, and they part on their own, instinctive acquiescence, letting her in.  
***  
It's another flash of deja vu--on his back in the grass, female shape balanced over his hips, dark hair slipping loose and wild to brush his face and tickle his neck as she kisses him, moves over him and brings his blood rushing easily to a boil, primed as it is with days of adrenaline running high.

But it's different, too, that one step different like all of this has been, because Maggie is different. Sharon had been frantic, hungry, driving him faster and faster and meeting his demands with twice as much, her body warm and naked under his hands. Here and now, they both still have their flight suits on, and Maggie rocks over him, rolling her hips in a rhythm that's just a little bit too slow. She ignores the thrusts of his hips and the hopeful, hinting words he whispers against his mouth, her hands braced on either side of his head. Sharp scent fills his nostrils as her fingers clench, breaking grass stems and digging into the soil.

She's still moving so damn slowly, but grinding down harder now, her breath hot against his cheek and neck as she breaks the kiss. She sits up and he groans as her weight shifts against him, pressing harder, better, her hands settling flat and feather-light against his chest. His flight suit feels like a shell, locking him inside and letting him melt himself slowly, trapping the heat and the sweat he feels running down his spine. It's not exactly comfortable and he can't imagine it's all that great for her, just raw friction, though maybe that's the point. Nothing easy or soft, not even here at the end.

Friction's enough for him, friction and exhaustion and the stale burned-out adrenaline still in his blood. His hips arch up again and he comes, pressing his lips hard together to hold back another groan, not sure what name would escape if he let it. "Frak," he breathes as his muscles relax and he looks up at her.

Her eyes are closed tight, her teeth worrying at her lower lip, and he reaches for the zip of her suit without pausing to think. Her eyes open as he opens it enough to get his hand inside and he shakes his head. "Let me," he says, and she laughs, breathless and shaky.

"Frak," she says, tilting her head back and looking at the stars again. "Yeah."

He slips his hand past the loose trousers under her flight suit, the fabric rough against his skin with the built-up sweat and dirt from these days of running, and finds where she's hot and slick. Working his thumb and fingers against her, he brings her off as fast as he can, watching the flush rise under the pale skin of her face, dark tendrils of hair clinging sweat-damp and looking like secret messages sketched in ink.

She sinks down against his chest after, not quite relaxing but not resisting when he lets his clean hand settle against the small of her back. She rests her forehead against his shoulder, her arms ticked tight between her chest and his, and for a long moment they both just breathe, slightly out of sync with one another.

"Maggie..." he starts, and she shakes her head.

"Don't." Her face is still hidden, but her voice doesn't shake or carry a shred of wistfulness. She's all business, resigned. He didn't really expect any different, not from her. She is as she is, and it got them through this, after all.

She laughs against his neck, her breath hot against the cooling sweat, making him shiver. He wants to ask her what's so funny, but the transmitter is chirping merrily away, picking up a return signal from a rescue Raptor high up in orbit, and there isn't any time.  
***  
They spend two days in sickbay for dehydration. When they're released, the first thing he does is go to see Sharon. He doesn't know where Maggie goes, but he'd guess the pilot rec if he gave it any thought.

He catches her in the gym two days after that, squaring off with the punching bag, Hot Dog bracing it for her with a look of indifference.

"I got it, Costanza," Helo says, stepping in. She looks at him and wipes her forehead on her arm, raising her eyebrows. He looks at the slash under her hairline, still ugly and red.

"It's gonna scar," she says.

"I wasn't..."

"Yeah, you were." She shrugs. "What do you need?"

"I'm spotting you." He taps the bag for emphasis and she laughs, stepping back and squaring off again. He waits until she finishes the next sequence and stops to breathe again. "And I wanted to ask you something."

"Shoot," she says, reaching for her water bottle.

"CAG's shuffling up the rotation." He bats the bag back and forth between open palms. "Need an ECO?"

She chokes on her drink. "You frakking kidding me? Getting shot down once wasn't enough, Lieutenant I Have Shitty Luck?"

"Ah, but you're missing the point." He nods solemnly. "The Gods might have it in for _me_ , but there's no way they'll do that to _you_ twice."

"You sure about that, Helo?"

"Nah." He grins at her and her face twitches as she fights to keep from grinning back. "But doesn't it sound good?"

"It sounds...doable." She laughs and holds out her hands for him to tug her gloves off, then punches him in the arm. "But anything goes wrong, I'm blaming you."

He wouldn't have it any other way.  



End file.
